Gaming hits next level with Xbox 360

[D0GG]

Inside Xbox 360

Microsoft fired the opening salvo in the war of the next-generation videogames Thursday night by unveiling the successor to the Xbox on an MTV special.

Sleek and off-white, the new Xbox 360 system looks like an iPod on steroids. Scheduled to arrive before the holiday season (no price set), the Xbox 360 will usher players into what Microsoft calls the "third stage" in the evolution of games — one of high-definition images and larger environments to be explored through greatly expanded multiplayer and online games.

"Remember going from 2-D games to 3-D? We're going from today's 3-D worlds to high-definition worlds that really will look like a movie or television show," chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach says. All games will be in HD, but only HDTVs will show them at highest quality. Microsoft estimates that 100 million homes worldwide will have advanced TV sets by 2008. "That is going to lead to fundamental changes in expectations, and Xbox 360 is going to deliver."

By releasing Xbox 360 this year, Microsoft hopes to leapfrog Sony, which is expected to announce plans for next year's successor to the PS2 next week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in L.A. "Sony was dominant in terms of market share this round. It's going to be hard for them to match that (again)," says David Cole of DFC Intelligence. "With Microsoft getting out first, it's going to be more of a level playing field."

Nintendo also will reveal plans for its new system, Revolution, due in 2006. The system will support wireless Internet and play DVD movies plus current GameCube games.

No word yet on whether the Xbox 360 will play current Xbox games. If not, that would disappoint many of the devoted 20 million Xbox owners who will want to play their old games on the new system. And retailers may not be thrilled about devoting space to a fourth console game system (including the current Xbox, PS2 and GameCube), along with the growing lineup of portables (Nintendo's DS and Game Boy SP, plus Sony's PSP), says Richard Doherty of The Envisioneering Group.

Beyond that, the added detail needed for HD games may tax developers and divert resources from making games for other systems this Christmas. "Artists do want to see this higher quality, but it is adding to the cost and time of developing a game," Doherty says.

And Sony's next system is expected to have twice the power of the Xbox 360, so Microsoft may not be able to siphon off many Sony fans. "It may not be the full giant step the PS2 was from the PlayStation," Doherty says, "but it certainly marks the beginning of a new era of games designed to be richer ... and to depend on multiplayer gaming as their main mode: not you vs. the machine, but you vs. a friend."

One Xbox 360 game in development from Rare, Perfect Dark Zero, supports up to 64 players at a time. Most current games top out at 16.

"In every transition, processing power and memory take a certain level of jump," says Glenn Entis, chief visual officer of Electronic Arts, which is examining the possibilities of the new technology. Environments will be more lifelike — you'll see leaves on trees moving in golf games, and the ball will behave differently when hit out of varying degrees of rough. Athletes' faces may be so well defined that "you will start to read the eyes of NBA players, so that head fakes and no-look elements become a part of the game," he says.

Microsoft appears to be on the right track, says John Davison, editorial director of Ziff Davis' videogame magazines. "It's debatable about whether we really need another Xbox right now, but there's no denying the excitement about 360."

Source

Xbox Live to Get Overhaul with Xbox 360

When the Xbox 360 goes on sale this holiday season in North America, Europe and Japan, gamers will notice some significant changes to Xbox Live, both in terms of functionality and availability.

Xbox Live as accessed on the Xbox 360 will include a “Gold” and “Silver” level of subscription. Xbox Live Silver will be free with an Xbox 360 system and enable players to maintain an online Gamer Profile, use Xbox Live voice chat, send and receive text and voice messages and access the new Xbox Live Marketplace to download game demos trailers; new levels and multiplayer maps; new weapons, vehicles and skins; arcade, card and board games and community-created content.

All of these materials can be downloaded to the detachable Xbox 360 hard drive.

The Silver level of Xbox Live will also track Achievements (rewards players have earned in games), Gamerzone (style of play) and a custom-created Gamertile (a visual icon to represent the gamer online).

However, if gamers want to actually play multiplayer games online, Xbox Live Gold, which requires a fee like the current Xbox Live service, is the only way to play online. Other Xbox Live Gold features include video messaging, online tournaments and exclusive programming such as playing with celebrities and joining sponsored tournaments to win prizes.

DailyGame will have more about the evolution of Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 next week from E3.

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Specs

"this fact sheet relates to a prerelease product that may be substantially modified before its first commercial release". Anyway, here they are:

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU

* Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each

* Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total

* VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total

* 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread

* 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance

* 9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor

* 10 MB of embedded DRAM

* 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines

* 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines

* Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance

* 500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate

* 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA

Shader Performance

* 48 billion shader operations per second

Memory

* 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM

* 700 MHz of DDR

* Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth

* 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth

* 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM

* 21.6 GB/s front-side bus

Overall System Floating-Point Performance

* 1 teraflop

Storage

* Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive

* 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM

* Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB

I/O

* Support for up to four wireless game controllers

* Three USB 2.0 ports

* Two memory unit slots

Optimized for Online

* Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music

* Built-in Ethernet port

* Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g

* Video camera ready

Digital Media Support

* Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD • Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs

* Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive

* Custom playlists in every game

* Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

* Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers

High-Definition Game Support

* All games supported at 16:9, 720p, and 1080i, anti-aliasing

* Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported

Audio

* Multi-channel surround sound output

* Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio

* 320 independent decompression channels

* 32-bit audio processing

* Over 256 audio channels

System Orientation

* Stands vertically or horizontally

Customizable Face Plates

* Interchangeable to personalize the console

Source

[DoLFaN]

*Drops dead to excitment*

*raises from the dead, brushes off shoulders, shrugs, and remembers that the PS3 is coming out soon and will rape the Xbox360*

No doubt tho, the Xbox360 does look sick

Cool Beans

[D0GG]

Xbox 360 to play original Xbox games

At the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Microsoft revealed that the Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible with original Xbox games. The announcement comes after vast speculation that the software maker would include the feature in order for existing Xbox owners to make a smooth transition to the next-generation hardware.

The Xbox 360 faces tough competition against Sony's Playstation 3. Sony revealed the Nvidia-powered system today and said that the new Playstation would be backwards compatible with PS2 and original PSone games.

The Xbox was Microsoft's first entry in the video game market. After acheiving a solid #2 position behind Sony, the company has invested more into making Xbox 360 a full multimedia station. The Xbox 360 will include a progressive scan DVD player, and the option to stream recorded television shows, music, and videos from a Windows Media Center PC.

Microsoft said today that there over 160 Xbox 360 games in development. It also said that its Xbox Live onling gaming service is close to reaching two million subscribers.

Source

[Rudeboy2025]

The dwindling fog around Microsoft's launch plans for the Xbox 360 dissipated further yesterday when the likely price of the Xbox 360 was revealed. Speaking to the financial news site TheStreet.com, Microsoft corporate vice president and chief XNA architect J Allard was asked if the Xbox 360 would launch with the same $299 price tag as the original. "It's going to be in the neighborhood [of $300]," he said, apparently dispelling fears of a $399 or even $499 machine, although $350--or even $360--could still be possible. However, Allard also stressed that any final decision on the 360's price was "about two months away."

Meanwhile, further north, the Canadian daily The Globe and Mail ran an article profiling Cimtek, a small company specializing in quality assurance testing at a Chinese electronics plants. Burlington, Ontario-based Cimtek recently landed a monster contract to help oversee production of the Xbox 360 in Guangdong Province, in the south of China.

Speaking to the The Globe and Mail, Cimtek vice president of operations Craig Thornton outlined the Xbox 360 manufacturing plan, saying that the console would be in " preliminary build stage until July," after which the console will enter the product-validation phase before "hitting full-scale production in September."

Then Thornton let slip the Xbox 360's target ship date, saying of Microsoft, "They have a huge mandate for getting [the Xbox] out for Thanksgiving this year." His comments appear to confirm the November launch date accidentally posted on MTV prior to the May 12 Xbox 360 unveiling on the network. It also further cements speculation that the console would hit the market in mid-November, around the anniversary of the release of the first Xbox in 2001.

Whatever its exact price or lauch date may be, the Xbox 360 will definitely arrive before the end of 2005 worldwide. "We will be launching the next generation of Xbox in North America and Europe and Japan this holiday season," chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach told GameSpot earlier this year.

Source: GameSpot

In other XBox news...

Microsoft will release Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 simultaneously with the launch of Sony's PlayStation 3 -- expected next spring -- according to a profile of Bill Gates in the latest issue of Time magazine.

The article, in an issue whose cover features Gates and the freshly-unveiled Xbox 360 console, features a telling sidebar: "Note to the hardcore faithful: the next version of Halo will not, repeat not, be ready in time for the launch of Xbox 360. It will be part of the all-important second wave next spring."

If the success of the first two Halo titles are an indication -- Halo 2 alone sold more than 6.5 million copies -- a third game in the franchise is one of the biggest weapons Microsoft has in the next generation. Why release Halo 3 in spring? That's when most expect the PlayStation 3 to launch.

The Time article continues: "'It's perfect,' Gates says, radiant with bloodlust. 'The day Sony launches [the PS3], and they walk right into Halo 3.'"

Source: Wired News

[Guest tensegg]

iPod on steroids ;) :P the ben johnson of games consoles. I dont even have a console at the moment, but looking that one makes one horny. :D

[Rudeboy2025]

Far Cry Only for Xbox

Ubisoft announced today that Far Cry Instincts will be an Xbox exclusive title. The Instincts website which can be found here is now clearly lacking the logos for GameCube and PS2.

The jungle based first-person shooter was adapted from the popular PC game that was released in March of 2004. Far from a straight port the console version promises to add new weapons, vehicles, and feral powers to the adventure. In this version of the story John Carver is infected with the virus that created the mutated beasts in the PC game giving him powerful claws, faster movement, and enhanced vision.

Source: IGN

Xbox 360 May (Eventually) Support HD-DVD

Microsoft and Toshiba to codevelop players that use the next-gen storage format, which Bill Gates says future models of the next-gen console might adopt.

A major development in the next-generation disc wars took place this week, with Sony's top rival in the format flap inking a pact with its main competitor in the games market. At a Tokyo press conference on Monday, Microsoft and Toshiba announced that they will jointly work on the development of HD-DVD players that use Microsoft Windows CE technology.

Toshiba hopes the alliance with Microsoft will help streamline production of the next-generation DVD player. "I believe this will bring practical benefits, such as a shorter development period and lower costs," stated Atsutoshi Nishida, president and CEO of Toshiba. The two companies also announced that they plan to develop mobile PCs that use the next version of the Windows operating system, known as Longhorn.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who also attended the event, commented that Microsoft "has taken a neutral position as to the format [dispute]" between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, the format Sony is backing. However, when asked if Microsoft's Xbox 360 will adopt HD-DVD, Gates commented that initial shipments of the console will be based on the current DVD format as planned, but the machine may incorporate an additional capability to read HD-DVD in the future.

The Blu-ray and HD-DVD factions have waged a three-year war to get their format adopted as the next-generation standard for home media. In February, the two sides called a truce when they began negotiations for a unified standard that takes advantage of both formats. The negotiations broke off without any results, and the two camps have sent mixed messages about whether or not they will resume talks.

Nishida dodged questions about whether his company's new project with Microsoft would have any impact on negotiations for a unified disc format. "It's hard to answer that," he said. "We must see things from our end user's point of view."

Source: GameSpot